On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at a most disturbing Canadian cult, the Ant Hill Kids. Founded by Roch Thériault (aka Moses, aka Poppy), this group started as an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists, but soon turned to a sadistic torture house. From frozen babies and the cutting off of toes to homemade pain surgeries and lots of castration, this cult was about as bad as it gets.

Thériault was born to a religiously hyper household. They were members of a group called the White Berets, a pseudo-military religion that was highly political and sold journals to make money. Thériault was bright and charismatic from a young age but finished school at 7th grade. His father was abusive, so he left home soon after and married and started a normal life. His life got flipped, turned upside down, when a surgery went bad, and the results were constant pain. He turned to alcohol to self-medicate. His wife left him for sleeping with other women and being drunk, and at his homeless lowest, Thériault found the Seventh Day Adventists.

He started selling literature for them and was amazingly successful, so his pastor moved him up to start recruiting members for their church. After a short amount of time, he started to recruit for his own group instead of the church, and his cult was born. On a hike one day, he had a holy vision of a spot that God would spare when the end of the world game a few years later, in 1979. He moved his group there and had them build a new town. He said they worked like ants on a hill, hence the cult’s name.

Once everything was in place, the level of pain, punishment, and depravity is hard to capture in a couple hundred words of show notes. Ant Hill Kids had toes and fingers cut off. Limbs were removed. Children were nailed to trees where other kids threw rocks at them. Babies were left to freeze to death as a mercy to avoid Thériault’s sadism. People had to break their own legs, had their teeth plucked out, were castrated, had their genitals burned, and more than one was killed by Thériault’s home surgeries.

What happened to Thériault? What brought down the Ant Hill Kids? How many people died? How did Thériault avoid capture when confronted by police more than once? What did the cult do once he was arrested the first time? How about the second? Listen, laugh, learn.

Visit Our Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roch_Th%C3%A9riault

https://www.cvltnation.com/ant-hill-kids-break-legs-sledgehammer-go-hell/

https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/murder/roch-theriault-the-horrifying-savagery-home-surgery-of-canadas-most-violent-cult-leader

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/chilling-insight-doomsday-cult-members-13995059

https://www.darkhistories.com/roch-theriault-the-ant-hill-kids/